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Ski resorts: What type of client for what type of built environment? Ski resorts are only one side of the winter tourism equation : there can be no resorts without holiday- makers. Thus, resorts have been designed for holiday-makers, but who are these holiday- makers ? How can "tourist demand" be defined ? And who defines tourists' expectations ? The roles of all the actors involved in the life of a resort lead us to a definition of demand and to possible solutions to meet this demand. Each actor defines his or her expectations with respect to their occupation, interests, and involvement in local political life. Finally, demand is defined in relation to the answers that one wants — or can provide. By means of several textual analyses, we show that two specific elements concerning mountain development persist: the "target core" and the expectations linked to the social image of mountains. We try to demonstrate that these elements are constructed and defined empirically and even irrationally.

Mountains through the eyes of town planners (1930-1940). In the 1930s and 1940s, experiments in regional planning in mountain areas were few and far between. Planners and architects who took part in the Modern Movement of that time imagined development solutions which are still the subject of discussion on both sides of international mountain borders even today. According to J. P Sabatou and A. Olivetti, who were instrumental in drawing up the Chamonix and Aoste valleys plans, careful planning is the best tool for developing a local tourism industry and freeing the Alps from their isolation. In contrast to the French analysis of the tourist industry, based largely on ski-lift capacity and the size of the skiing area, the Italians have focussed more on architecture and settlement type. Thus two different planning traditions have developed: the first concerned with defining the economic criteria for successful operation and the rules governing land-use, the second more interested in experimenting with new graphic tools.

Tourism vernacular: the tourist as architect in the mountain resort of Valloire. The mountain resort of Valloire is widely appreciated as a village resort on a human scale. And yet most of the village s buildings are recent and disparate, having been developed with no particular unifying architectural form, style or tradition. The charm of the resort may therefore lie more in the fact that it looks like a residential town suburb in a mountain setting.

The chalet: a new relationship with place, a new status. The concept of "montagnité" was developed from a geo-ar- chitectural approach to places and built objects. In the mountain resort of today, the chalet is losing its strict typological functionality and becoming more an expression of ostentatious decoration. In reflecting the complexity of man /place relationships, the chalet is taking on a new status, that of place- object.

Tourism and the automobile: the road to the ski runs. Tourism and the automobile are intricately linked to one another and ever since their origins have developed in parallel. Their relationship, however, is somewhat of a paradox and often even conflic- tual : the car is an essential means of access to tourist areas, but is also a source of pollution and degradation for the landscape and natural environment, to a point where it can even jeopardize tourism itself. And in winter sports resorts, cars of course need parking areas. This problem was for a long time considered of secondary importance, merely an unproductive constraint. Then architects attempted to integrate the car into the leisure environment, with varying degrees of success. But parking needs have continued to grow: "No parking, no business" ! In areas where space is at a premium, and where it is important to preserve the quality of the environment, parking areas are becoming a vital means of functional and economic exchange, an interface that must be treated with care and must provide a return on investment. Recent developments bear witness to these concerns, as architectural and planning solutions transform in particular the image of the "snow front". The examples presented here illustrate the difficulties encountered in winter resorts today and the possibilities for solutions to questions that involve an interplay of infrastructure, architecture and the natural environment.

Reflections on the identity of a winter sports resort. Within the framework of the conference on "Winter sports resorts : the tourist, the architect and the town planner", multidisciplinary groups visited the winter resort of Crans-Montana. The article, which is no ways an exhaustive description of the resort, attempts to summarize the different impressions gained from this experience. It focuses mainly on the definition of a mountain winter sports resort.

From the concept of the resort to that of the district. Tourism is an activity where the satisfaction of tourists remains the driving force behind the tourist flows which in turn generate the tourist economy. The purely private (corporate) management systems seem to respond more quickly to changes brought about by tourism than the organisations involving local authorities (communities). However, in the long term, the latter, by developing their powers of local governance can hope, as in the industrial districts, to be better equipped to deal with the complexity of tourist areas.